Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Cass Sunstein on How You Break the Habituation Cycle EP 421

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on Passionstruck. There's a mirror image lesson from randomized experiments, which surprised me also, which is if you're having a bad experience, like cleaning up, let's say, a room that's really dirty or messy, people tend to think, I'll break it up, I'll do half now and then half tomorrow. No, you do it all now, you'll habituate to the unpleasantness and the second hour in won't be as bad as the first hour in, on average, which means motor through the bad experiences and chop up the great experiences. Welcome to Passionstruck.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turned their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form

Starting point is 00:00:59 interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become Passionstruck. Hello friends and welcome back to episode 421 of Passionstruck, number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn and discover. New ways to live better, be better

Starting point is 00:01:28 and make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply wanna introduce this to a friend or a family member. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics

Starting point is 00:01:41 that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. I also wanted to tell you that my brand new book, Passionstruck, 12 Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life, is now available and you can order it on Amazon, go to your local bookstore or the passionstruck.com website to find it. In case you missed my interviews from last week, I had some phenomenal ones.

Starting point is 00:02:07 The first featured Jamie Kernelima, who is an American entrepreneur who created a billion dollar business success story. She's a champion of women, a philanthropist, a culture shifter, and a highly sought after keynote speaker. She's also the New York Times bestselling author of Believe It. And in our interview, we discussed Believe It

Starting point is 00:02:24 and also her latest work, Worthy, How to Believe You're Enough and Transform Your Life. I also interviewed Harry Buddha Magar. He is someone who has turned adversity into triumph in a way that challenges our perceptions of possibility. From the remote farming fields in Nepal to the battlefields of Afghanistan and then to the soaring heights of Mount Everest, Harry's life is a testament to the unyielding power of the human spirit. And then I also interviewed Charles Duhigg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New Yorker staff writer, and the New York Times best-selling

Starting point is 00:02:52 author of The Power of Habit. Charles brings his signature blend of in-depth research and captivating storytelling to his latest groundbreaking book, Supercommunicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. And if you liked any of those three previous episodes or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the passion struck community. And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today we are delving into the fascinating realms of human behavior, cognitive biases and the power of awareness with a very special guest, Cass Sunstein. The nation's most cited legal scholar,

Starting point is 00:03:25 who for the past 15 years has been at the forefront of behavior economics. Cass, a prolific author and Harvard Law professor, is renowned for his co-authorship of the groundbreaking book Nudge, alongside Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler. But today, we're here to explore his latest collaboration with Tally Sherrow, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University College London in MIT.

Starting point is 00:03:47 Their new book, Look Again, the power of noticing what was always there, offers an enlightening journey into the concept of habituation, our psychological tendency to get used to our surroundings and how it shapes our thoughts, actions, and ultimately our lives. In our interview, Cash Sheds Light on the inescapable nature of habituation and its profound impact on our daily lives. From the effects of social media on our creativity to the ways we assess risk and adapt to climate change, look again. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and breaking free from the cognitive fog that envelops us, offering fresh perspectives on living a more examined and fruitful life. This episode is also about action,

Starting point is 00:04:25 and in it, CAS introduces us to the concept of dishabituation entrepreneurs, individuals who challenge norms and make us see the world anew. So prepare to be enlightened, inspired, and perhaps a bit challenged as we delve into Look Again with CAS Sunstein. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me

Starting point is 00:04:42 to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have Cass Sunstein on Passionstruck. Welcome, Cass. Thank you so much. It's a thrill and an honor to be here. Cass, your work has significantly influenced the intersection of law, economics, and behavior science. Can you share what the audience would initially spark your interest in exploring these areas together?

Starting point is 00:05:14 Happy to. So as a kid law professor, I was at the University of Chicago, amazing institution, and the giants, they weren't six feet 10, but they seemed like they were six foot 10, all emphasized that human beings are rational. And the idea was if you want to change behavior, you change their incentives. So you make it more expensive to buy cigarettes, you make it more expensive to buy a house, and then you'll change behavior. That's basically the foundation of policy and life. And I was a literature

Starting point is 00:05:46 major in college, and I had read Shakespeare and James Joyce, and I thought the idea that people are rational, that doesn't seem like real, that human beings are imperfect. We're pretty amazing, but sometimes we get stuck by emotions. If we lose something, we get really upset. If we gain something, we get happy, but not as happy as we get stuck by emotions. If we lose something, we get really upset. If we gain something, we get happy, but not as happy as we get sad. If we lose something that we're often altruistic and willing to sacrifice our self-interest to help someone who's suffering or maybe to punish someone who's mean, that made me be a kind of clueless skeptic about the giants who roamed the earth in Chicago. I discovered at some point that there was a new field called behavioral economics,

Starting point is 00:06:34 where people were actually exploring what people are like in a way that reminded me of Shakespeare and James Joyce, but was more rigorous. Then I thought, there's a sunburst in the sky, and I'm not going to lose sight of that sunburst. Okay. Well, thank you for explaining that. And on this show, as I told you before we started, we've explored the intricacies of behavior science with more than 42 experts in the field. And something that frequently comes up is the profound impact of our choices, something that many have referred to as micro-choices that we make. Your seminal work, Nudge, brought the concept of choice architecture into the spotlight. Could you share what choice architecture is and the inspiration behind this revolutionary idea?

Starting point is 00:07:21 Sure. So, suppose you go on a website and it says in big letters, there's a product that is going to improve your health and maybe it's focused on heart disease. And then there are little things that say, and if you're worried about colds or if you're worried about COVID and if you're worried about cancer, here are some things. Now there's choice architecture there, where the product that helps your art is being accentuated, the architecture of the website draws your eyes and your attention and your focus to that, and the things that are focused on cancer and COVID and flu, that's kind of smaller, and that will make all the difference. People focus on what's big. A grocery store will have choice architecture in it. It might have chocolate things that are delicious at the checkout counter, or it might

Starting point is 00:08:12 have carrots at the checkout counter. It might have full calorie soda with lots of sugar. That might be very visible as soon as you walk in the store, or it might have as soon as you walk in the store water or something that's maybe a little more flavorful than water, but not full of sugar and full of calories. And the architecture of a store actually really determines choice, just as the architecture of a website. If you get some form from your employer, it might be impossible to understand, it might be easy to understand, it might accentuate certain things, worry about safety here, maybe you're in construction, so do three things that'll make you safer, or it might say nothing about safety, it might just say something about vacation.

Starting point is 00:08:57 Everywhere we go, there's an architecture. You go to the airport, there's a choice architecture. You go in a store that is selling you technology and there's an architecture. And it can really have an impact on decisions. Yeah, man, I've seen that play out so many times throughout my career in Fortune 50 companies and how big that choice architecture really is in making both large decisions and small decisions that pervade our lives. So I wanted to jump to your most recent work, which I have here in front of us, which releases today. Look again. Co-authored with Tally Sherrow, if I have Tally's name correct, delves into the power of noticing what was always there. What was the catalyst for this

Starting point is 00:09:41 collaboration and what do you hope readers take away from the book? What was the catalyst for this collaboration and what do you hope readers take away from the book? Okay, so here's something really fundamental to our species and it's fundamental to stasis and things just going like this or change and things going like this. And it works in companies, it works in marriages, it works in cities, and it works in Washington, D.C. It works in cities and it works in Washington, DC. And there's no book length treatment about it. So what got us really excited is maybe the most fundamental thing of all about our species is that we habituate. That means that if you go in a room that's full of smoke, the first moment you'll think this is really smelly, but after a little while you might

Starting point is 00:10:25 barely notice the smoke unless you're especially sensitive. If you go swimming and it's kind of cold the first 30 seconds we've all experienced this, my gosh this is intolerable, it's so cold. And then after seven minutes come on in the water's fine. You don't even notice that it's cold. And that's about smells and about feelings. It's also true about life. If you're in, let's say, a marriage where you're really lucky, as I am, you found someone amazing and incredible, there's a risk for some people, for many people, that after a while, they don't even notice how amazing their partner is. They love their partner, they like their partner, but the fact that this is the luckiest thing that ever happened to them,

Starting point is 00:11:10 they don't have that thought very much. You might be in a job where, my gosh, I got to have this job. A lot of people are blessed to have a job that's a good job. It might even be better than good. But after a while, people start thinking, okay, I'm getting up this morning and going there. It's not cold water that's turned kind of no temperature at all. That's like your job, even though you're really lucky. And what's true for great things is also true for not such good things. Your boss might be really mean, and it might be after two weeks of disbelief that you're working for someone who's terrible. You kind of don't notice anymore, and you have that terrible phrase going through how it is what it is, and it is what it is a signal that human beings habituate. By the way, this is not true

Starting point is 00:11:58 only for people, it's true for dogs and cats and horses and unicellular organisms too. Well, I think a good way to introduce this is the way you start out the book discussing two women, Rachel and Julia. Both of them are living what most would consider a charmed life. However, Rachel sees her life from the perspective of it being born and mundane. And Julie, on the other hand, sees the miracles in her life big and small. Can you delve into this a bit deeper and explain what is causing people like Rachel to stop seeing and appreciating the good things and how Rachel can adopt Julia's perspective? Okay. So imagine two people, and this isn't hypothetical. One has a really good life and she has a family and she has resources and she has a place to live that's really nice. And she is in something like disbelief at her own good fortune. She appreciates it and it's amazing.

Starting point is 00:13:01 Rachel, by contrast, has a similar life. It's really good, but she's sport. It's not a big deal for her. And she's a little frustrated. She might even be approaching midlife crisis. Julia is actually a real person. Rachel is an amalgam of people we know. And Julia is Julia Roberts, the actor. And Julia, what I've just said about Julia is actually true. She was interviewed not long ago, and she was asked what's her perfect day. And she said, perfect day, I get up, I make breakfast for my kids, I take them to school, start to get ready to have lunch with my husband, then I'm going to pick up my kids from sports practice. Then she stops herself, Julia Roberts, and says, it's boring. I get it, it's boring. But she

Starting point is 00:13:45 said, because of my job, I'm an actor, I go away. And then when I come back, it's surrounded by pixie dust. It re-sparkles. And what Julia has is a sense that the great things in her life are a blessing, and she doesn't take them as gray or routine because she goes away because of her job. Now, to have a life like a well-known actor is not something most of us can aspire to. But to notice or not to notice the good things in our life is something that we all are faced with, and what Rachel could do is either imaginatively just think maybe once a day, what would it be like to be away from my family and my life for a week? Or she might think a little bit, I'm going to put myself in the same mindset as I end up sometimes when I have a dream that everyone I love is gone, maybe they died,

Starting point is 00:14:41 maybe they don't like me anymore, then you wake up from such a dream and you think, what a relief that everything re-sparkles for that moment after that dream. And we can do that through gratitude exercises. They work for restoring well-being. If that seems a little too kind of formulaic to think once in a while, my gosh, how did I get that in my life that can produce a Julia perspective? Yeah, I know when I was in some of my senior executive roles and I was traveling all the time, when I came back and I got to see my kids, it was such a fresh experience because it was almost like I had missed out on some fundamental things in their lives, and I wanted to rekindle that when I had that opportunity. And I guess that's what you're

Starting point is 00:15:31 talking about. Completely. Then people who are lucky enough to have kids, they can be a handful, and after a day it can get routinized. But if you can find a way to see your kid as a gift or magic, which every child is, then that child will resparkle and there'll be something in your soul that will ignite. And that's good for the kid, that's also good for the parent. Yes, I've been talking a lot to my aunt who is an attorney herself, and she has her first grandchild now, and she keeps just telling me about the wonders of observing the world through the lens of a two-year-old and how many amazing memories it brings back to her of her own childhood, but also that of her son

Starting point is 00:16:25 and everything else. She said, it's almost like I get to experience newfound awe every single day because of how I'm seeing it. Do you think that's common as well? Well, you just said it's fantastic. Let's distinguish, shall we, a two-year-old from someone who's experienced midlife crises? Midlife crises, it turns out, the data show are pervasive across the world. The decade is not the same across the world, but midlife crises are an international phenomenon. What's that about? We think that for people who are in, let's say, their 50s, a significant number of them,

Starting point is 00:17:03 very far from all, but a significant number of them have habituated to their lives so much that it's the opposite of really what a two-year-old experiences. Not that it's not like life is bad, but it's steady state and there aren't changes. So the way the human mind works is that if we have a surprise signal in our head, then we're all alert and energized. If we don't have a surprise signal in our head, then we're all alert and energized. If we don't have a surprise signal, then it's as if the world is colorless. And for a certain number of people who reach a certain age, it says if the world lacks color. And that doesn't mean that they're stressed. It doesn't mean that they're angry. It doesn't mean

Starting point is 00:17:41 that they're having a terrible time. It just means that they're a little tent. Now, what your aunt is describing, and it's perfect, thank you for that, is that if you are two years old, or if you're with a two-year-old and sympathetically connected, you're seeing the world just as that person does, and a two-year-old is not habituated, at least not habituated to much. Everything's new. It's like the Julia Roberts' re-sparkling thing happens when you come into another house, and my gosh, there's a color you've never seen before, where there's an alignment of, let's say, glasses and dishes, that it's startling and may be beautiful or may be horrible, and oh my gosh. And that way of seeing the world, which Raja's experiencing, is the opposite of the midlife crisis. It might have terrorism, but it's

Starting point is 00:18:34 certainly going to be full of colors. Yeah, it's so interesting because I had the opportunity to interview Dacker Keltner, who I'm sure you might know. He teaches at Berkeley, and he's been studying awe for 30 years. And what I found so profound in our discussion is you think that you find awe by the birth of your child or seeing the Grand Canyon. But what his research found is that we can all experience it almost every single day. And the most simple way to do it is through acts of service or witnessing others do acts of kindness. Is that anything that you've examined in your own work?

Starting point is 00:19:14 Indirectly, or a cousin concept. So let me give you some data, not involving something good, and then connect it to what you just said. One of the pieces of research that we did for the book that's about something not so good is if people are incentivized to lie, where they'll make money if they lie, a certain number of people are going to lie. They're going to lie to a stranger to make money. The amygdala in their brain is on fire as they lie. That's because people who are incentivized to lie on average won't like lying at all, even if they do it. So they lie, but they are feeling extremely agitated, and this is actually recorded in brain activity. But as the day goes on and as they keep lying, they will get more relaxed about it. These are normal people who are not dishonest people.

Starting point is 00:20:07 In the course of a day, their lies will decreasingly activate the amygdala, to the point where at the end of the day, the amygdala is not even noticing that they're lying. It's a little like you go into cold water and in the first moment, oh my gosh, and then 15 minutes later, even seven minutes later, the water's fine. The lying's fine. And this is how people habituate in their brains to their own misconduct. And it's right to say, if someone else is lying or if someone else is behaving badly, one's initial reaction horrible, but the brain quiets after a while. Now, awe is the mirror image of that, where we are so struck by the wonder of something. I'm sure there's a neurological link that can identify the region, that something in the brain is open and amazed. And that requires

Starting point is 00:21:08 novelty, or at least the experience in the head of novelty, even if not literal novelty. So if you see something that is extremely unselfish and heroic, you don't see that every day. It's like a mountain, and you think you have overcome with wonder. It might be that if you see it a few times, desensitization as to cold and to lying will be relatively modest depending on how your mind works. If you are the sort of person who can be amazed by your own child every day, maybe because you do a psychological exercise by which the child's presence is seen as a miracle. Then you can do that for acts that inspire awe. It is the case that some people habituate more than others. We can work toward being a less habituating type

Starting point is 00:22:01 of person. Though if we do that, we want to be careful because we do habituate to not good things, and sometimes that's a great blessing. So one thing I really wanted to talk about is a lot of us see habituation as a negative thing. People talk about it as living your life on autopilot. One of the things you bring up in the book is that habituation is also crucial for survival. Can you explain why? Okay, we want to be very clear about what habituation is. It's diminishing sensitivity to a stimulus. And that's a little bit of a mouthful, but think that you find an extremely nice friend, and the friend is nice every day. And if it doesn't get annoying, it might get less interesting over time.

Starting point is 00:22:50 Or it might be that you're around dirty air and you've moved to a city where there's air pollution and at the beginning cough, it's terrible. As the time goes on, you might get used to the cough, we might not cough so much, it won't be so terrible. So that's what we mean by habituation. Evolution makes us less sensitive to stimuli that are constant, and that's because it's evolutionarily valuable. If you see an attractive mate possibility walking by, a remind is energized. And if you see a threat like a lion or something scary that's new, that's energizing. Or if you see something that makes you sad, that's a kind of energizing, which depends on its change or novelty. If our

Starting point is 00:23:43 brains were equally on the alert to things that are constant, we'd be overloaded, we wouldn't be able to prioritize, and we wouldn't be able to focus on what's new. And focusing on what's new is often what's required. So the fact that lions and dogs and tigers and bears are habituating creatures, helps explain their evolutionary success, and that's also true of human beings. More mundanely, if you're in a place, let's say where the weather's pretty terrible, it's cold, let's say it's Maine or Vermont, which I love dearly, but both get cold, you probably won't be bothered by the cold as someone who lives in Hawaii or Los Angeles would be in their first, let's say, winter in those places. And that's great for the people in Vermont and

Starting point is 00:24:34 New Hampshire who are just puzzled that people who come from California and warm climates are disturbed by the cold. What's wrong with them? That's life. And we habituate to various things. I had a time a number of years ago where I had to move to New York and forgive me New Yorkers by my phrasing, I had to move to New York. I'm a suburban kid. I was raised outside of Boston, and New York overwhelmed me. And in the first month, I said to a great friend, And in the first month, I said to a great friend, I'm having a tough time here, I'm gonna handle this. And my friend who was a student of habituation long before Tali and I started working on the book

Starting point is 00:25:14 said, just wait, it's gonna be fine. So you're gonna habituate. I didn't know really what he meant, but he was wise and he was right that after a little while, New York was not a suburb, but it was manageable. It didn't start on me. Thank you for sharing that. You've just read up Tally again. I understand, as I read through

Starting point is 00:25:37 the book, that you ended up using a lot of controlled experiments to illustrate points throughout it. Is there one of these experiments and its findings that you found surprisingly different than you expected it to be? Yes. So I'll give you the top line results and adjust your lightly toward the experiments. Suppose you have something great that you're engaged in. Maybe you're having a massage, maybe you're listening to music that you really love. And then suppose someone asks you, do you want to have the full experience of listening to the music for the next period, or having a massage for the next period, or do you want to break it up into pieces?

Starting point is 00:26:22 Most people think, I want to hear the music the whole way through, or I want to have the 45-minute massage. That's not the right answer, that if you break up a good experience into segments, you're going to like it better. And the reason is, for people who like massages, the first period is the best. And then if you break it up into two segments, you take, let's say, a five-minute break, you get the benefit of the first segment twice. If you get a meal or a great experience of some kind to break it up, then you get the amazement of the experience twice. And the coolest data supportive of this is the peak moment in a great vacation, let's say on the ocean, is 40 odd hours in, 43 hours roughly in.

Starting point is 00:27:13 That's when people are the happiest. If you have a week-long vacation, if you're lucky enough and it's a beautiful place, after that it's downhill. I don't like it as much. That amazed me. Now, that doesn't mean that the third and fourth day on a vacation are bad. They're good. But the first is what people single out as the best part of the vacation. The first time I saw the room, the first time I saw the beach,

Starting point is 00:27:37 the first time I went in the water. And after 43 hours, you're not going to have a lot more firsts. And that suggests for vacations, there's a lesson, which is rather than one three-week vacation, maybe try three one-week vacations. That might be too expensive. Maybe make them a little more approximate. That's a life lesson I'm taking to heart. And there's a mirror image lesson from randomized experiments, which surprises me also, which is if you're having a bad experience like cleaning up, let's say, a room that's really dirty or messy, people tend to think, I'll break it up, I'll have it twice, I'll do half now and then half tomorrow. No, you do it all now, you'll habituate to the unpleasantness, and the second hour

Starting point is 00:28:22 in won't be as bad as the first hour in on average, which means motor through the bad experiences and chop up the great experiences. All right. So everyone who's listening, I think this was extremely important. So we need to break up our positive experiences into small chunks so we can combat habituation. So great learning right there. Cass on the podcast, I've had a number of people, Dory Clark being one, Juliet Funt being another, and Sarah Mednick who's a professor at University of California Irvine,

Starting point is 00:28:57 all talk about the importance of breaks in our lives. The first two talk about it is creating white space. And Sarah Mednick has a great book about the power of downstate and how it's such a rejuvenating force for us. Why building on this idea of these small chunks, why are breaks so important for combating the routine of our daily lives? Okay, so a reason is that it's disabituating. So if you take a break, let's say from something that's good and you get some critical distance on it, its goodness will be full of color and brightness. Whereas if you just go through it, its goodness will stay constant in the sense that it will continue, but it will be less vivid for you.

Starting point is 00:29:47 There's a great author and therapist, Esther Perel, who does couples therapy, who says when married couple, when they are most attracted to each other, it's often when one sees the other talking to a third person. And that's because you see your, maybe wife or husband talking to someone else, and you see them from a distance. It's a little like a break. And you think, wow, that person's amazing. You don't take them for granted anymore. They're not like furniture. They're like someone who you're really lucky that's your person. So the idea of a break is that it's disabituating. It makes the diminished sensitivity, it's as if you're resetting. That's also true for things that aren't so good anymore. If you're in, let's say, a job where every day is a little demeaning or a little irritating and you're used to it, you take a break,

Starting point is 00:30:41 you take a day away, people treat you with respect maybe, then you go back to your job and you think, what? There's something wrong with this. I'm going to jump into a completely different area. You are one of the most profound scholars on the Constitution and in many ways how our whole system works. How do you view our current political situation and the likeliness that we're going to have the same two candidates again vying for president through the lens of habituation? Dr. Robert L. Thanks for that. That's a fantastic question. So my day job really is constitutional law and administrative law. So I have something like awe, as you were describing,

Starting point is 00:31:28 for our constitutional order. Some people might react to a mountain, that's how I think of our constitution. And our constitutional tradition also inspires me with, it's as if I'm looking at something giant and beautiful. So the constitutional order is something that's a gift Americans get. The fact is that we may habituate to our constitutional order and not see it as the wonder that it is, instead take it as background. I think many Americans have habituated to the constitution and that's something we should probably work against so that we see it anew, not as just something that's on paper. With respect to political candidates, this is a great question. Notice that I'm going to free associate here and talk about

Starting point is 00:32:20 how the science might inform the phenomenon, and I'm gonna be a little reckless. So if you have a new candidate, let's say someone you've never seen before, you are on the alert. It's like a tiger who sees an animal never witnessed ever, and the tiger is going to be very agitated. So if you see a new candidate, what's potentially good about the candidate will be like loud music and what's potentially not good about the candidate will also

Starting point is 00:32:53 be loud music. And that's an opportunity for someone who's new, but it's also a problem that if there's someone who's new who let's say had some less than admirable period in his or her forties, you hear that and you think, oh my gosh. If you have a candidate with whom you're familiar, let's say because the person's been president before or public life before, you habituate to what's good and not so good about the person. And that can be a big benefit for someone who has some, let's say, downsides, where the downsides, if you saw that in someone new, you'd think, why is this person trying to get my vote? You'd think that's horrible. But if it's someone who's been around for a while, you think, oh, that's part of that person's package. No, I might like it. I might not like it, but it's a little like gray. That, I think, is often a benefit for someone who's been in public life for a long time because we've habituated to what might be a deal breaker.

Starting point is 00:34:01 Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that. I just look back at the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and I was recently watching a whole series on him, and it was a great history lesson for me about how he was trying to challenge so much of the habitual patterns that we found ourselves in. And I just wonder, looking back, if he hadn't been assassinated, which I still think could have been prevented, would we even have gone into Vietnam and many other things that he was trying to push against? So it really is interesting when you look at it. It's great. So Robert Kennedy said a great, disabituating thing. I'll mangle the line

Starting point is 00:34:42 a little bit. He might have gotten it from Escalus or something. He said, some people look at things that are and ask why. I look at things that never were and ask why not. That's great. He wrote a book called To Seek a Newer World where the theme was why not for great things? And if you ask that question, then you are automatically in a world of disabituating. You're asking about never-wors and asking, why didn't we get that? How can we get that? I'm going to jump from there because it triggered my mind. I recently interviewed Bob Sutton about his book that talks about organizational friction, and he has something in it that I love called friction fixers. And in your book,

Starting point is 00:35:31 you discuss dishabituation entrepreneurs, which I love that visual. Can you give an example of such an individual from the book? Yeah. Martin Luther King was a disabituation entrepreneur in the sense that the status quo, which people had gotten used to, he held it up in the air and asked, look at this afresh, where the thing was racial segregation for much of King's work, and he was saying, look at that, daily humiliation. Well, why do we have that? He said, if we're wrong, then the Constitution of the United States is wrong. So he made people see a new terribleness. I'll name another disabituation entrepreneur less famous than King, named Catherine McKinnon, who's also a constitutional scholar and a law professor who wrote a book in the 1980s called Sexual Harassment of Working Women. And what was really

Starting point is 00:36:32 astonishing about that book is it named a phenomenon, sexual harassment, and it told a lot of stories of really horrific sexual harassment. And it said that's a form of sex discrimination. Someone is told, sleep with me or lose your job. That's a woman who's told that. If that person were a male, would that person have been told that? That would be very unlikely. And the book, when it was originally written, I remember this, was pretty strong stuff. And then in a short period, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed and involved Republican as well as Democratic appointees. They also, that's right. If a woman is told to sleep with me or lose your job and a man wouldn't

Starting point is 00:37:16 be subject to that, then that's sex discrimination. And whatever you think about sexual harassment and its boundaries, the basic idea that to tell people they lose their job if they don't give sexual favors or to create an environment where women are, let's say, just treated a certain way because the man likes them in a romantic. I'm not sure romantic is the right word, but let's go with that in a romantic way. That's wrong. That's terrible. That's a form of discrimination. And it was taken for granted. My mother, when I was early working on issues of equality and stuff, my mother originally thought,

Starting point is 00:37:55 why are you working on that stuff? That's not constitutional law. That's irrelevant. And finally, I talked to her a little bit about sexual harassment, just from what I learned from McKenon and others, and my mother said three words to me that I'd never heard from her. She never told her son these words. She never told me before and she never told me after. She said three words. She said,

Starting point is 00:38:14 God bless you. And she said it with extreme emotion. And that's because she had experienced in her life clearly. She was signaling to me sexual harassment. She'd experienced that, but she had experienced in her life clearly, she was signaling to me sexual harassment, she'd experienced that, but she never had a term for it. And McKinnon made it more than anyone, she made it a thing. God bless her. Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Cass. And there are a couple more topics that I know we're getting limited on time that I did want to cover. Going back to politics for a second, one of the things that we're seeing, especially with AI right now, is the ability for there to be pervasive misinformation, especially social media and everything else. How do you suggest people enhance their awareness of this? Okay, let's describe a phenomenon that's related to habituation and then go at the problem. I'm going to do something that's for purposes of illustration.

Starting point is 00:39:14 What shall I do? The greatest basketball player of all time, just on the statistics, it turns out is Saphon Curry. That if you look at his numbers, he's the all-time scoring champ. He has more assists than anybody else. He is also a spectacular rebounder. In fact, his average rebounding numbers are superior to that of centers and forwards. Okay, I just lied.

Starting point is 00:39:42 Most of what I just said is false. He's a great basketball player. On the statistics, he is not the greatest player. He's very good. He's one of the best, but on what I just said on the statistics is false. Okay, here's the problem. If you hear something repeated, you will tend to think it's true. And in fact, even if you're told in real time that it's false, some part of your brain will think it's true. So I'm combining two phenomenon. One is the illusory truth effect, where if people are told something repeatedly, they tend to think it's true. And the other is truth bias, where if people are told something that's false and they're told in real time that's false, they'll still in some part of their brain think of it as true. Now, both of those are

Starting point is 00:40:28 connected with habituation because if something is readily processed in your head, you tend to think it's true. And if you've heard something twice, it's easy to process, you've heard it before. And if you've heard something once even with a disclaimer, some part of your brain easily processes that. So we habituate to things that we've heard repeatedly, and that means we are especially susceptible to believing falsehoods that are on social media a lot. Now it's on social media platforms, I think, and on each of us to try to counteract. I'd say every human being on the planet over the age of 12 should know about the illusory truth effect by which, if something's repeated, you will believe it's true in some part of your brain because it's easy to process. That

Starting point is 00:41:18 has some inoculative power, at least, and then for social media companies to be alert to the fact that a disclaimer, this is false, is not going to be adequate, certainly in the face of repeated falsehoods. So you should spur creativity in thinking about ways to reduce the dissemination of falsehoods because they're going to get into people's heads. Okay. And one other quick topic along these same lines I wanted to touch on was climate change. Okay. And one other quick topic along these same lines I wanted to touch on was climate change. And that is something that is kind of polarizing. People tend to believe it's either true or it's not true. How can habituation affect our perception? And what actions can we take to counteract it? The one promising thing about climate change is,

Starting point is 00:42:03 of course, you're right, that some people think climate change is, of course, you're right that some people think climate change is the worst threat to humanity and some people think it's a threat. Nobody likes a flood or extreme heat or wildfire or drought. And what the source of wildfire or drought isn't maybe necessary to specify to emphasize we need to take steps to reduce the arms associated with those things. And there are things we can do that promote resilience, that often command a consensus across political differences on climate change. So people in Texas, some of whom aren't that excited about, let's go after climate change, they are pretty concerned about extreme heat, and that's a way forward. I think for all of us to think

Starting point is 00:42:53 with respect to climate change that what we've heard a lot from people might not be true, which might make the people who are most frightened about climate change at least willing to scrutinize the intensity of their fear, even if that is sustained. And I should say, I'm personally very worried about climate change. I'm going to try to take what I just said to heart for myself. And if you're not worried about climate change, partly because the people you listen to or you're surrounded by aren't, to realize that you might be in a kind of trap and that there are people who think differently, who are also human and in good faith, and to think maybe you should have humility towards your own skepticism.

Starting point is 00:43:40 Okay. And then, Cass, you're cited in very many places. Where's the best central place that people can go if they want to learn more about you? Well, I'd advise people more to learn about you or about Katie Milkman or about Angela Duckworth and about me. But if you want to learn about me, I'm grateful for that. And amazon.com, I'm grateful for that. And amazon.com, for my sins, I have a bunch of books. But my current focus is the book, which has the title, which is intended as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look again. Well, Cass, it was such an honor for you to be here today on Passion Struck. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Great pleasure. Really enjoyed it. What a phenomenal interview that was with Cass Sunstein. It was such an honor to have him here today. And I wanted to thank Cass and Simon and Schuster for the honor and privilege of being here. Links to all things Cass Sunstein will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

Starting point is 00:44:37 Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passionstruck Clips. Please go check it out and subscribe. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles

Starting point is 00:44:58 and you can sign up for our newsletter, Live Intentionally on passionstruck.com. If you wanna know how I managed to book amazing people like Cass Sunstein, it's because of my network, go out there and build your network now before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the Passionstruck podcast interview that I did with my friend Dan Harris, who's a former ABC news anchor who reported from all over the world covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and producing investigative reports in places like Haiti, Cambodia, as well as the Amazon. But after experiencing an on-air panic attack while they were filming Good Morning America,

Starting point is 00:45:33 Dan realized that it was time for him to make some changes in his life. Despite some initial misgivings, he turned his attention to meditation. Harris is the author of the book, 10% Happier, a number one New York Times bestseller. He's also the host of the podcast of the same name, 10% Happier, and founder of the 10% Happier Meditation app. I picked this concept up from the Dalai Lama, who I've had the great privilege to interview a few times. He has this idea of wise selfishness, which I really like because I don't love admitting

Starting point is 00:46:05 this, but it's true and wired, I find, to be selfish. And that is one of the biggest flaws that I've worked on inside of myself. And I just naturally go in that direction. I don't think this is totally uncommon, but it's a part of my mind that I've wrestled with a little bit. And the Dalai Lama's argument is that we're all selfish, but there's a way to do it correctly. There's a wise or enlightened self-interest. And I think what you're describing fits that bill

Starting point is 00:46:33 because if you can focus on what you're doing that's valuable to other people, in my experience, it makes you less anxious and it improves the quality of your work and will likely, I'm not guaranteeing this, but it's certainly what I've experienced personally, make you more successful. Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those who could use

Starting point is 00:46:54 its inspiration. If you know someone who could use some of the wise words that Cass shared on today's episode, then definitely share it with your friends and family. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion strong.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Cass Sunstein on How You Break the Habituation Cycle EP 421

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